Yup, still at it! It looks like this awful plateau might be over! I am not calling it definitively, though, because I am afraid it might come back :P I lost 2.2 lbs last week! That puts me back on track. (My goal is 100 lbs/ 1 year.. which is about 2lbs/week) I suppose I should also point out that the end of this week marks the 1/3 market. I am 1/3 of the way through with my original goal! 1/3 of 100 lbs would be about 33, and I've lost almost 37, so I'm still on track. I'm over 1/3 of the way there! (-..- Still feels like it's taking forever, but I know I'm doing ok)

This calorie cycling thing is still bothering me. I can't seem to get the knack of it. I'll have one higher calorie day and then spend the rest of the week struggling. I suppose the fact that I feel much hungrier all the time means it's working? It's annoying, because I wasn't having hunger issues like this at all before. I know I ought to be eating more veggies, and I try to get them in with every meal. If I was able to get more through snacking or whatever, it might help with hunger a bit more. I have a really hard time saying no to my sweets, though.

The snacks I've been turning to a lot lately when I have a sweet tooth are not that bad, either. I am able to control myself (usually) and just have one serving, too. I've been getting those Fiber One 90 calorie brownings. I tried the Chocolate Peanut-butter ones this week, but they didnt' seem as great to me as the plain chocolate fudge ones. I also tried the Skinny Cow Chocolate peanut butter wafer candy bar. Those things rock. They are so good... TOO GOOD. I want to eat the whole box instead of just one. I probably won't get those anymore. It doesn't matter that they are 110 cal each if you want to eat 5 of them. My other sweets are things like cinnamon applesauce, skinny cow fudge bars (don't taste diet.. so good!), skinny cow cookies& cream truffle bars (ice cream! yay!), and the Jamba Juice strawberry/vanilla bars. Those are like vanilla froyo and strawbery shebet swirled together on a bar. They are around 80 cal each, and they taste amazing. I am satisfied having one, and I love them!

For meals.. I've been doing a lot of classic homestyle type stuff lately. It seems like I do rotissreie chicken+ starch+ veggie a lot, or baked/grilled pork tenderloin + starch+ veggie. I can have a lot of meat, 1/2 cup mashed potatoes, and a big pile of veggies for under 400 cal. Sometimes I'll make hamburger helper stroganoff with bison meat. I want to try to get away from that a bit, though. Even though I have about 1 1/4 cup of it, and stay under 400 cal, it's noodles and powdered sauce. Matt really likes it, though, so that and tuna helper will be things I'm sure we'll continue to eat. He's being really cool about the food, though. I go out of my way to try to put together meals he'll like, and he eats what I serve him. He rarely goes back for seconds, and you can tell. He's been losing weight too! Inadvertantly, I'm sure... but his shirts look like they fit better.

Exercise has continued to be a struggle for me. Lately I've been slipping up and not finishing discs out of laziness, or sometimes waiting to work out until after 11AM. I have NOT given up. I got my 6 days in last week. I'm just worried that if I slip up anymore, I'm going to start missing workouts. I know that it's vital to my fitness plan that I get those extra 400-500 calories burned. If I don't, that's a much smaller deficit, which means less weight loss. I really hate working out, though. It feels like a struggle to get it done most of the time. The easiest thing for me is the bike. I can get those 30 min in no problem. I may procrastinate a lot on it, but once I'm on the bike, I'm there and I don't leave for 30 min. The DVD is harder, since I'm not tied down to a machine.

In other news, I've been breaking out like crazy, and it makes me sad. All this working out and weight loss and eating healthy crap is supposed to keep me from breaking out, yo! Face, I thought we were past this adolescent nonsense! :( Coupled with the in-grown moustache hairs, my face just looks like a mess today. It's probably because I caked the makeup on and went out in the heat last Friday... I decided I really wanted some authentic soft tacos with some barbacoa or something. For some reason, Alisha decided to dress up, and I couldn't be shown up, so I dressed up too! We looked hawt. But then the heat baked all that crud into my face and my makeup remover must not have gotten everything out of the pores. I should have used my scrubby thing! But it's too late now T..T

My plans for this week: Try to get exercises started by no later than 10:30AM. Keep up with food. Have a high calorie day this week... maybe go out to eat? That does it every time.

If I stay on track, I will be below 200 lbs by around mid-Sept(-50 lbs at that point!). That would be awesome! After that, I can concentrate on the second 50.... if I can manage that in a year, we'll talk about losing another 5-15. Getting to 135 would get me to highschool weight. That seems impossible, yo! But the high end of a "normal" BMI would put me at about 145. So we'll see!

I heard Dr Oz say that you should change your exercise routine every 6 days to help with weight loss. That might help. You are doing great, wish you were closer so I could get some motivation to do the same.Grandma

I really miss having a workout/diet partner! I'm a lot more successful now than any other attempt, but it's lonlier,and sometimes much harder to stay motivated to work out!

I am rotating my exercises right now. I work out 6 days a week. Mon/Weds/Fri= 30 min on exercise bike. Tues/Thurs/Sat= strength training exercise DVDs that are about an hour long.

Since I started doing the DVDs, I'm actually working out longer than I was when I first started! But I needed to change things up since I hit a plateau last month :( I think the new workout is working now though!